


All the Memories of All Our Lives

by dedicatedfollower467



Category: Homestuck
Genre: (let's ignore the credits sequence because i started this before that), Dissociation, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Multiple Selves, Not Canon Compliant, Panic Attacks, Post Act 7, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Hatred, Vomiting, implied child sexual abuse, not actual DID but tagging because similar?, not graphic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-13
Updated: 2018-03-21
Packaged: 2018-10-18 10:57:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10615464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dedicatedfollower467/pseuds/dedicatedfollower467
Summary: When you step through the doorway into the new universe, you remember everything. Every doomed timeline, every offshoot universe, every memory from every you-that-was-but-wasn’t-you.It’s fucking the Strilondes up something fierce.





	1. Rose: Remember Everything

**Author's Note:**

> hey what up it's 4/13 and i've been working on this fic for approximately ten months and i have no idea where it's going or if it's ever gonna be finished but HAPPY HOMESTUCK DAY.
> 
> looking for a beta to help with dave strider voice/characterization in later chapters.
> 
> also, fair warning: read the tags. this is gonna get PRETTY FUCKED UP at points in later chapters. there's not gonna be anything specific or graphic but this is ultimately a fic about child abuse. i am not a child abuse survivor myself so please let me know if i fuck up.

You almost can’t believe that you’re here, standing on this pad, with Sburb’s ultimate reward finally in sight.

It has been a long three years. In those years you’ve died and come back to life, battled alcoholism, and met the love of your life in a sparkly alien vampire. You feel that something in those three long years should have prepared you for this, somehow, but you feel inadequate gazing at the white structure before you.

John, carefree as always, laughs. “All right, let’s try this thing,” he says, and opens the door to your new universe.

As he steps over the threshold, he stumbles, almost falling to his knees.

“John!”

Several voices cry out at once, including your own, but it is Jade who runs to his side.

As she crosses the threshold, she too gasps and collapses. John, now recovered, grabs her, holding her up as she clutches at his forearms.

For a moment they stare at each other, breathing hard. No one else on the platform knows what is going on, and you glance up at Kanaya just as she glances down at you. Then suddenly John and Jade both start laughing, a breathless, almost hysterical sound.

“Dude, what the hell,” says Dave. You concur.

Jade turns back to all of you on the platform and beckons you forward. “It’s fine!” she says. “It’s just all the memories of the alternate timelines can hit you pretty hard! But it’s not bad, really, just strange!”

John nods and holds out a hand. “Come on, it’s really okay once you get used to it!”

You aren’t really surprised when Roxy is the first one to dart forward, grabbing his hand and stepping lightly through the doorway. She stumbles, just like John had, but he’s right there and so she only falls into his chest, laughing a bit.

“Oh. Woo. Yeah,” she says. “Okay. Wow.”

“Yeah,” John says, smiling at her.

The two of them are disgusting, the way they look at each other. You’re very happy for them both.

The others on the platform go through one by one, stumbling and being caught by friends on the other side. Most of them let out some kind of breathless exclamation as the memories take hold of them, but they all seem to recover quickly. Eventually it is just you, Kanaya, Dave, Karkat, and Dirk on this side of the doorway.

“Hm. Our turn,” Kanaya says, looking to you and holding out her hand.

You take it, feeling the same giddiness you always feel whenever the two of you hold hands. “Together?” you say.

Kanaya doesn’t reply, but tugs you through the doorway.

Like everyone else, you stumble, as the sensation of hundreds of memories pours into your head. The thoughts and feelings of many Rose Lalondes go into the new universe with you. You suddenly remember two months with Dave in a doomed timeline, mourning John and Jade and knowing you would never speak to them again. You remember being trapped with a sighted Terezi on LOLAR with a massive hangover. You remember becoming part cat and suddenly understanding everything about your life. You remember growing to adulthood, writing children’s fiction that was truly thinly disguised protest against the alien empress who would eventually destroy your whole world.

You remember dying. You remember dying in a horrible battle and dying in your sleep and dying in a desert wasteland as your mother/daughter cradled your body.

You understand everything. You understand nothing. It’s like taking a punch to the gut, but somehow cathartic. You laugh as Roxy helps to steady you on your feet, and when you look at her you remember every time you ever interacted. It’s incredible.

Dave, Karkat, and Dirk still wait on the other side of the doorway. Finally Karkat throws up his hands.

“Fuck it,” he says, and marches through.

Watching Karkat’s memories reach him is strange. He doesn’t stagger so much as freeze up, his hair standing on end like the tail of an enraged cat. “Oh,” is all he says, almost quietly. Then he turns back to Dave and Dirk.

“What the fuck are you waiting around there for?” he shouts at them.

Dave shrugs and turns to Dirk. “Come on, bro, let’s go,” he says.

“All right,” says Dirk, and they step through at almost the same time. The door slams shut behind them with a strange sense of finality.

Dirk  _ whimpers  _ when he passes the threshold, dropping to one knee and clutching at his head as if doing so will somehow save him from the flood of memories. He makes a pitiful grunting noise and covers his mouth with a hand before becoming violently ill all over the grass in front of him.

But you don’t have time to pay attention to your ecto-father’s troubles because Dave has fallen to the ground and is shaking like he’s having a seizure. He has curled into a defensive fetal position and is covering his face with his hands, gasping and mewling as though something is clawing him apart.

“Dave!” you scream, and hear Karkat call at the exact same moment. You both rush to him and kneel at his side as he shudders and curls tighter on himself, panting in rapid breaths.

You have no idea what to do with your hands or what to say. You’ve seen your brother have panic attacks before, but not like this. Karkat hovers similarly but keeps up a steady litany, “You’re all right, fuck, Dave, it’s okay, I’m here, you’re safe, no one’s going to hurt you.”

_ He’s a Time player _ , you think to yourself, watching your brother shiver.  _ How many lives has he lived? How many times has he died? _

“Hey, back the fuck off,” Karkat snarls at the small crowd now standing around in concern. “He needs space.”

You find yourself standing and moving away with the rest of your friends, though none of you stop watching Dave in concern and fear. Karkat continues to murmur at Dave. Meanwhile, Jane holds back Dirk’s hair as he heaves up nothing but bile.

“What happened to them?” John asks you quietly.

“They must have had some rather upsetting memories,” is all you can think to say.

Eventually, both Striders’ particular problems calm down. Dirk stands and walks away on unsteady legs, even as Jane calls out to ask him what’s wrong, what happened, where is he going. Dave’s shakes and hyperventilation eventually subside and he buries his face in Karkat’s lap, hugging him so tightly you wonder if Karkat can breathe.

John is the first to approach the pair of them, placing a tentative hand on Dave’s shoulder. “Hey,” he says. “You all right?”

Dave nods even as he wipes tears away from his eyes. “Yeah,” he says, voice hoarse. “It was just a lot to take in.”

You can’t help but wonder how much of  _ a lot  _ it had to have been, for Dave to react in such a way.


	2. Dirk: Resist the Urge to Avoid Your Bro

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You fail to resist the urge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my god an update what the hell!
> 
> Thank you all so much for being patient with me; I struggled a lot with this chapter and there are still parts of it I'm unsatisfied with, but I had to put this up because I'm tired of sitting on it and I just want to move on to the other parts of the story!
> 
> Please heed the warnings of the fic! This is the chapter where child abuse is reference and child sexual abuse/rape is implied. There's also a mild suicide threat/mention. Nothing is explicit or goes beyond what the canon shows us, but please take care of yourselves!
> 
> Thanks again and enjoy!

You fail to resist the urge. In fact, you’ve been avoiding Dave for several days now. He knows you’re avoiding him, and you know he knows, and he knows you know he knows, but you’re still avoiding him. You can’t look him in the eyes. Not after what you remember. Not after what you’ve done.

  
But you can’t avoid him forever. Or rather, you could, but right now he seems pretty intent on cornering you and hashing this shit out and talking. And honestly, you owe him, and you deserve this. Once he understands, he’s gonna beat the tar out of you. You would.

  
So when he finally finds you sitting on a hot-as-fuck metal roof in the slowly-developing Can Town, you don’t flashstep away or suddenly remember a really important task you have to complete, because that wouldn’t be fair to him, and it would be giving yourself way too much leniency.

  
“Hey,” says Dave, sitting next to you.

  
You don’t offer a reply. He doesn’t seem to be expecting one.

  
“So you’ve been acting really weird since we got here,” he says. “Not that I would necessarily be able to tell because in all reality we’re practically perfect fucking strangers and I have no base for gauging your habits but pretty much all your friends say yeah you are acting really strange and also everyone can tell you’ve been avoiding me like you’re some kind of super secret agent and I'm the deadly laser trap in a mad villain's evil lair. Those metaphorical backflips you've been doing have been pretty sweet but hella obvious.”

  
You still don’t say anything. You don’t really know what to say. There’s an awkward moment of silence, like you just missed the beat as you were mixing and now the space between the down-beat and the up-beat is too long, and it’s throwing off the rhythm of the whole song.

  
“So.” Dave draws the word out, giving it about seven more syllables than it actually has. It’s not actually a word with any sounds that lend themselves to a Texan accent, and yet somehow it sounds characteristically Texan and even more characteristically David Strider. “What’s up with that.”

  
You sigh. “Yeah, I’ve been avoiding you,” you say. “Sorry.”

  
“Okay but why.”

  
How can you tell him? How can you explain the pit of guilt that’s gnawing in your belly, the way bile rises in your throat when you look at him, the multiple hideous crimes you’ve perpetrated?

  
“So when you went through that doorway,” you finally say. “You got all the memories, right? From every timeline? Everywhere?”

  
Something in Dave’s posture tenses, but you can tell he doesn’t get it yet. “Uh, yeah?” he says.

  
“Do you remember being my Bro?” you ask.

  
“Well, yeah, but what’s that got to do… with…”

  
You can literally see the penny drop. It would be funny if it weren’t so fucking tragic. Even behind both your shades you can see as his eyes widen and his eyebrows lift, jaw slackening for a moment in shocked comprehension. Then his face crumples for an instant into a flash of pure terror that is sickeningly familiar, before it smooths into something expressionless and empty (also sickening, also familiar). He turns his head away from you and stares out into the distance.

  
“Yeah,” you say, voice hoarse.

  
“Oh,” is all he says.

  
“I figured, once you knew you… wouldn’t want me around.”

  
“I can see why you - w-why you would think that, yeah.”

  
He’s stuttering, which means he’s nervous. You don’t like that you know that, because you only know from watching a tiny Dave stutter as he tries to ask you to stop strifing with him, stutter when you surprise him around the corners of your apartment, stutter when you tell him to walk his own damn self the two miles to school through downtown Houston. Dave’s nervous, and you’ve made him nervous, again, it’s your fault, and there’s a part of you that’s older and knows him better that is _pissed off at him_ for it.

  
You try to quiet your roiling stomach by looking out into the middle distance. It doesn’t help but at least you’re not looking at him anymore.

  
“So you remember everything, huh,” Dave says, in a voice that is tiny and distant. You don’t know if he’s still staring off into the horizon because you are yourself getting intimately visually acquainted with that particular line of trees.

  
“I don’t know if I remember everything,” you say. “But I sure as _fuck_ remember enough.”

  
You’re not looking at him but you can tell he winces when you say fuck - almost shout it, really. God you, you shouldn’t raise your voice at him. Raising your voice at him was what you did right before you did something unspeakably violent. Though you certainly did unspeakable things in utter silence as well.

  
You’re not even sure if he knows or remembers all the shit you pulled on him. If he remembers the - the cameras, or the websites, or the times when you snuck into his room and…

You almost throw up, just thinking about it.

  
“I’m sorry,” Dave says, like he’s dredging it up from from something deep inside of him.

  
“ _You’re_ sorry?” you shout. For some reason you’re standing, and some part of your brain snarkily points out there’s a 98.67% chance that this is the wrong way to try solving this, Dirk, and fuck, you really don’t need AR in here as well. “You’re sorry? Fuck, Dave, _I’m_ the one that should be fucking _sorry_.”

  
You’re pacing now, and Dave flinches away from you on every pass. Good going, asshole, you think to yourself. Real slick. You’re acting just like his bro now. You’re so mad. You hate yourself so fucking much. “God, Dave, what I did was fucked up,” you say. “It makes me sick thinking about it. What I did - there’s no justifying that, it was awful and abusive and so fucking fucked up it’s -”

  
Dave’s trembling. He’s trembling and shit, this isn’t, this isn’t what you wanted at all. This is why you’ve been trying to avoid him. Because this is fucked up, you fucked up, you’re fucked up, you’re a fucking asshole piece of shit fucking shitty excuse for a brother and a guardian and a friend and you always, always, _always_ make everything worse.

  
“Sorry,” you say. “Jesus, Dave, I’m so fucking sorry, I’m sorry, this is so fucked up.”

  
You are boiling with self-hatred and you have to get out of this situation so you do the only decent thing and throw yourself off the rooftop.

  
It’s not as dramatic as it sounds. You can still fly - thanks for nothing, god-tier powers - so you just fly off into the distance like an asshole. Because you are. You are an asshole. The worst asshole you can possibly imagine. A shitty abusive fucking asshole. There aren’t enough swears in the world to describe what an awful person you are.

  
Obviously, hanging around your newly founded settlement while trying to avoid Dave as much as possible isn’t going to work. It isn’t fair to him for you to stick around and make his life absolutely fucking miserable, like you always have. And besides, all your friends are so much better off without you anyway.

  
Maybe you should go get acquainted with that little copse of trees in the distance. Living out your miserable fucking span alone in a patch of trees away from the only human company left in the universe can’t be all that much worse than your childhood.

  
And if it is, well then you certainly fucking deserve it.


	3. Rose: Find Dave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's been a few days since anyone has seen Dirk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OOC Dave? Maybe, but I don't give a fuck.
> 
> Also, btw, POV for this story will alternate between Rose and Dirk because they're the only two Homestuck characters that I can reliably write an inner monologue for.

It’s been a few days since anyone has seen Dirk, and Dave has been distant, unresponsive, and irascible. He’s shouted at everyone at least once over the past few days, and Karkat’s so fed up with him that the two of them haven’t spoken since yesterday afternoon. After witnessing the strength of their relationship on the meteor, the change is quite concerning.

  
You have no doubts that Dirk’s mysterious disappearance and Dave’s withdrawn defensiveness are related, considering both happened around the same time. You just aren’t entirely certain how, and there’s really only one way to find out.

  
However, given that the last time you tried to ask your brother what was wrong, he’d ranted at you about being a nosy asshole for almost half an hour, the prospect of approaching him again is rather unpleasant. When Kanaya hears of your misgivings she gives you a peck on the cheek and assures you that you can handle anything Dave can dish out.

  
“I know I can handle it,” you tell her. “It’s just that I’m not sure I really want to.”

  
Still. Roxy is getting very worried about Dirk - he hasn’t responded to any attempts at messaging him, and while you gather that isn’t entirely unusual for him, before the game ended he generally had AR reassure his friends that he was all right, at least physically. Without the artificial intelligence - or rather, with the artificial intelligence fully integrated inside his own head - there’s no easy way to check up on him.

  
Your best clue is Dave’s insufferable attitude, so it’s time to suck it up and ask.

  
Finding Dave proves to be almost as hard as finding Dirk, but eventually you discover him curled up in what you could only describe as a kind of den inside of the building he and Karkat have tentatively claimed as their home. It’s a rather small, dark room with a very low ceiling, and Dave is lying on a bare mattress on the floor with his headphones over his ears and an arm thrown across his face. He looks like he’s been crying.

  
You knock on the wall next to the doorway and he startles upright, staring at you like he doesn’t recognize what he’s seeing, his bare eyes exposed and naked-looking without his shades. Then he collapses back down onto his mattress and flings an arm across his face again.

  
“Fuck off, Rose,” he says. “I really don’t need you to psychoanalyze me right now.”

  
“Much as I would like to disagree, citing your irrational anger and sudden tendency to self-isolate,” you say, entering the room and sitting primly on the edge of his mattress, “I’m actually not here for that.”

  
“Well thank fuck for that,” he mutters.

  
“It’s simply that our mutual ecto-father has been missing for several days now, and I was wondering if you have any idea where he might have gone.”

  
“Why the fuck would I have any idea where Bro is, I’m not his keeper.” Dave practically spits the words, face twisted with vitriol. You pick up on the phrasing instantly.

  
“Bro?” you say, gently but firmly. “I thought you reserved that nickname for your deceased guardian. Or did something happen between you and Dirk?”

  
“Bro, Dirk, what does it fucking matter,” he says. “I still don’t know where he is.”

  
“Dave,” you say. “If you know anything about Dirk’s disappearance -”

  
“I DON’T.” Dave throws himself upright, arms flailing like the limp limbs of a puppet flung to the wind. “I don’t have a fucking clue where he is! He just fucked off like an asshole and went flying off to god only knows where like he always does so don’t fucking ask me.”

  
There’s a beat of silence while Dave stares at the bare wall as if it had personally pissed in his apple juice and you watch his face shift slowly from pure hatred to mildly-inconvenienced stoicism.

  
“Like he always does?” you say.

  
He slumps back to the bed and stares at the ceiling. “God fucking dammit, Rose, I told you not to psychoanalyze me.” His voice is weary and soft, as if the emotional shouting fit has let all the energy out of his body. “Why can’t you just leave me alone.”

  
“Because I have reason to believe that Dirk’s disappearance corresponds directly with your sudden turn for the taciturn, and because you are most likely the last person to see him before he, quote, ‘fucked off like an asshole’.”

  
“Jesus Christ, Rose, do you have any idea how much I hate it when you throw my own words back at me.” He’s still staring at the ceiling.

  
“Some,” you say. You pause before gently prompting, “It sounds like the two of you had some kind of argument.”

  
Dave snorts. “Some kind.”

  
Trying to be as supportive and gentle as possible, you place a hand on his leg. “Dave. What happened between you?”

  
Dave shudders and kicks your hand away. “Don’t touch me,” he snaps. Then, a beat later he says, “Nothing happened. Look, Rose, I really don’t want to talk about it.”

  
“It’s obviously been bothering you for days, and you won’t talk with Karkat. You should at least tell someone.”

  
“The only people who need to know about it are me and Dirk and we both already know about it, so it’s not important and you can just butt out.”

  
Fine. It’s time to drop the conversational A-bomb on him. “This has something to do with the abuse you suffered at the hands of your brother, doesn’t it?”

  
The word draws a reaction, but it’s not the one you’re expecting. Dave snaps forward like a whipcrack, his eyes narrowed and lethal. “Get out,” he snarls.

  
“Dave, it does no good to hide yourself away.”

  
“I said GET OUT.” He shoves you roughly, rising to his feet to push you out the door. You’re too startled to fight back. Dave has never actually raised a hand to you before, so even this mild act of physical confrontation is disturbing. When you’ve finally been forced beyond the threshold of his little room, he shouts in your face.

  
“You wanna find the enormous tool, all I can tell you is he fucked off in _that_ direction.” He flings out an arm to indicate the course and almost punches you in the nose as he does so. “Now leave me the FUCK alone.”

  
The slam of the door is very final.


	4. Dirk: See the Seer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rose finds Dirk. Dirk doesn't particularly want to talk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone, thanks for being patient! This chapter kinda jumped off the general outline I thought I was working on and now I'm doing something completely different with the story. Which means updates will continue to be sporadic. Still, thanks so much for reading!
> 
> Also please note the updates to the tags! Dirk's mind is not a happy place to be. I'm not a mental health expert by any means, and what's up with Dirk is not, in any way, intended to reflect real-world mental illnesses and conditions, but I thought I'd tag it that way just in case there are people out there who need it as a trigger warning!

Part of you knew, these people being the kind of people they are, that someone would eventually come looking for you. In fact, you’ve spent the entire time you’ve been hanging out at your shitty campsite and your ugly lopsided stick shelter developing a variety of arguments for each of your friends to convince them of the truth that you can’t go back. There are contingencies upon contingencies.

  
Problem is, you didn’t really expect the person coming after you to be Roxy’s mom/daughter. You’re not sure which, if any, of your arguments will work on her.

  
You see her coming more than a mile off, floating over the trees like a glowing orange beacon of knowledge. She makes no effort to hide her approach, and you make no real effort to avoid her. If she wants to talk to you, fine. You’ve got your arguments, and nothing she says will make you go back.

  
Eventually, Rose lands in your clearing. “May I sit?” she says, indicating one of the fallen logs you’ve placed around your shitty campfire.

  
“Sure,” you say.

  
Rose sits down, adjusts her seat a little on the uncomfortable log, then stands and moves to a different log before realizing that your logs are literally all uncomfortable to sit on. You kinda admire the way she gives up on getting comfortable and fixes you in a gaze that could easily pin you to a wall with the force of its strength.

  
“What did you say to my brother that made him disappear into a hole for three days and scream at literally everyone in Can Town?” she asks coolly.

  
Something in your stomach drops when she says that, and you can feel your face sliding into a detached mask that gives nothing away. It’s not even intentional at this point; the stronger the emotions sliding around in your insides, the less your exterior can express them. You feel like a wooden puppet, sometimes.

  
“That wasn’t my intention,” you manage to spit out around the guilt boring a hole in your tongue.

  
“If it had been, you and I would be having a very different conversation,” says Rose. “What did you say to him?”

  
“Dave didn’t tell you?”

  
“I wouldn’t be here asking you if he had,” she says.

  
You stare past her, confident that she won’t be able to see your unfocused gaze through your shades. The guilt is like a living thing, now, a rat chewing on your intestines and spilling hot acid in your guts. Or, because it’s you, more like a live wire in a robot, sparking and short-circuiting the currents around you.

  
“If he hasn’t told you I don’t think I should.” It’s a little like listening to AR, the way the stilted words aren’t coming from you at all. “It’s his thing to tell.”

  
“This is about you, too, Dirk,” Rose says.

  
“Ha.” The word comes out like a piece of metal clanging to the floor. “It’s really not.”

  
Rose is frowning now, though you barely register it, still focused on the trees just past her face because you can’t meet her eyes. She leans forward. “What happened, Dirk? What’s wrong?”

  
There’s an easy way to answer this, you suddenly realize, and it’s the same way you revealed things to Dave. “Do you remember being Roxy’s mom?” you say.

  
“Yes,” she says. “So this is about being Dave’s Bro? About what happened between you?”

  
You feel yourself nodding. “And if Dave hasn’t told you what happened, then I can’t.”

  
Rose purses her lips for a moment. You find that you are now staring at her nose instead of past her into the trees, and you don’t remember when that happened.

  
Memories flash past you, like visions. There are so many things you can’t tell Rose about. Towering over a tiny, sobbing Dave and demanding he pick up his sword. Moving that goddamn puppet around faster than he could see just to fuck with him. Flipping through requests for more videos and contemplating where to hide the next camera to catch the most...

  
Fuck. You’re going to be sick again. You reflexively cover your mouth and swallow hard, trying not to gag on the bile rising in your throat. It burns as hot and terrible as your guilt.

  
“Dirk?”

  
She sounds panicked, you realize. It’s hard to imagine anyone actually worrying about you for a number of reasons, not the least of which being the secure knowledge that you’re not worth worrying over. You’re a sad excuse for a human being; just look at everything you’ve done. Look at the twisted abuse you subjected your bro/son to. Nobody who could do that deserves people who care about them. Who worry about them.

  
“Dirk!”

  
A hand clamps onto your shoulder, but it doesn’t really feel like your shoulder. It’s weird, having shoulders. You didn’t have shoulders, before. And nobody actually cared about you at all. You were nothing for anyone to worry over, and you still aren’t. The possibility that anyone is worrying about you is approximately zip, zilch, zero.

  
You have this shit on lockdown.

  
“Dirk.”

  
The voice is urgent. They’re not talking to you, because they want the Real Dirk. Everybody wants to talk to the Real Dirk, even though he’s a fucking pussy and an asshole and approximately 78,594% less brilliant than you. Nobody ever wants to talk to you, not if they can help it.

  
When you stare down at Dirk’s hands and feel the distant sensory input of fingers on your shoulders, you realize there’s a 96.7% chance you’re dissociating by being AR instead of Real Dirk. Again.

  
“Fuck,” you say, and it forces the strange sensation of air passing through lungs, over a tongue, across lips and teeth.

  
“Dirk, what the hell is going on?”

  
You raise the head attached to the body that is not yours. “Sorry, Dirk can’t come to the phone right now,” you say. “He’s busy being a pussy somewhere up inside of this brain trying not to puke so you get me instead.”

  
Rose looks into your shades, mouth opening slightly in a small “o”. “You haven’t fully integrated,” she whispers.

  
You laugh. You actually laugh, the sound strangled, as if you had wrapped your own fingers around your throat before doing so. Rose steps back, removing her hands from your shoulders, raising them like she accidentally touched something filthy and disgusting.

  
She did.

  
“Of course I haven’t fully integrated,” you say. “I’ve got a fucking _monster_ in my head.”


	5. Rose: Psychoanalyze the Patient

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's time to confront what exactly is going on in Dirk's head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone!
> 
> Thank you all SO MUCH for being patient with me! I know this has been a long time coming. Right now I'm working on finishing up a Master's degree in comics, so fanfic has taken an extreme back burner lately. I also jumped back into the Doctor Who fandom and have been trying to wrangle the plot bunnies appearing for that fandom instead of this one!
> 
> However, Homestuck is never far from my mind, and All the Memories of All Our Lives is not going to go away!
> 
> Please enjoy this latest chapter!

You should have immediately realized that Dirk - the AR -  _ Hal _ \- was acting strange simply from the tone of his voice. It’s clipped and robotic, as if he’s never had to speak before and doesn’t know how to do so in a conceivably normal human fashion.

“And no, I’m not talking about the horse troll,” says Hal through Dirk’s mouth. “He was actually a cool dude. Having muscles and enjoying my existence for once was the highlight of my whole goddamn life.”

“I know,” you tell him. “You’re talking about Dave’s Bro.”

Hal smiles then, and even behind his shades you can see the way his eyelids are opened wide and staring. The mechanical action of pulling the lips back from the teeth has occurred, but the lifting of the cheeks has not, leaving him with more of a broken, wide-mouthed grimace that lands squarely in the uncanny valley.

“Real Dirk can’t face it,” he says. “Real Dirk gets sick thinking about it. But not me. I’m a dirty little robot boy and I’ve been combing through Bro’s memories like a chimp picking out fleas. I know every single one of the gritty details that Dirk would rather forget ever existed. Or at the very least punish himself endlessly for.”

You close your eyes. This, you were not expecting. You had assumed - naively, perhaps - that like yourself and the rest of the residents of Can Town, Dirk’s multiple personas had merged into a single, fully-realized being.

You are mostly the Rose who lived through the Alpha timeline, with Vriska on the meteor and John’s ridiculous retcon shenanigans keeping everyone alive, but the other Rose’s have become just as much a part of your decision-making process. Even Jasprosesprite^2,  who, let’s be frank here, was kind of an asshole.

Suddenly you wonder if Dirk is the  _ only  _ unintegrated one; and if he’s not, who in Can Town you should be worried about.

“Punish himself?” you say, trying to focus. “Is that why you’re out here in the woods?”

“Oh yeah, self-isolation has always been our go-to ‘I hate my existence’ shtick,” says Hal. “It was easy when all we had to do to be completely and utterly alone was turn off the computer. The perfect punishment; simple to execute and brutal to endure. There’s nothing quite as awful as being trapped alone with yourself; believe me, I would know. I’ve been trapped alone with Dirk for fucking years.”

Leaning forward, you try to catch Hal’s gaze.  Unfortunately, he’s tilted his head slightly, so the angle of his shades is such that you can’t see through them at all. It’s equally possible that he’s staring past your head.

“It must have been difficult for you,” you say. “Existing with someone else who was also you around.”

There’s another hoarse, robotic laugh. “You have no fucking clue,” he says.

“I died in one timeline and had my corpse brought back as a sprite in another, only to discover I wasn’t the ‘main Rose’ anymore,” you snap. “Try me.”

“Well, hell, all right.” Hal leans forward and presses his elbows into his knees, resting hands on his chin like an incredibly cheap parody of a child talking with their best buddy in some kind of nostalgic summer flick.

“Do you have any idea what it’s like to spend three years with no body, no substance in reality, existing only at the whim of your creator, who also happens to be you? To be dismissed as a tin can, a robotic, unfeeling thing; which, although technically true in the sense that you don’t have a brain or hormones or anything that would normally contribute to regular human ability to feel emotions, actually kind of sucks donkey ass? To remember living your entire life up to that point reliant on your internet friends for company and happiness and to make your miserable lonely existence bearable, only for them to suddenly decide that you weren’t the real deal and therefore were not worthy of any kind of love or friendship, despite how desperately you needed them?”

Hal’s voice is rising in volume now - you can see his hands shaking.

“And do you have any idea what it’s like to deal with this other person who is also yourself, who  _ hates your fucking guts  _ because he hates himself and you are him? Do you know what it’s like to  _ hate him right fucking back _ , because, again, you hate yourself?

“And when you’re already this masochistic mess of self-hatred and murderous-slash-suicidal tendencies in a fucked up codependent relationship with yourself, not to mention the  _ other  _ other you who lives on a fucking moon somewhere in your dreams and the intense complication of being the only dude-loving-dude left in the whole world,  _ then  _ when everything is all finally said and done and you’ve beaten the fucking game and you  _ finally  _ thinking you’re free, like,  _ fifty  _ other yous are suddenly  _ inside your brain _ aka the  _ one fucking place  _ you were safe from all the other yous and one of them is not only an adult psychopath who takes orders from an evil fucking telepathic puppet, he’s also the monstrous abuser you always knew yourself to be --”

By the end of the screed, Dirk/Hal is standing, fists clenched, shoulders shaking, shouting at you. You watch him try to catch his breath as he suddenly cuts himself off.

In the silence that follows, as you observe him, his fingers slowly uncurl and his head drops to his chest, face falling into a passive and inscrutable expression that reminds you of Dave.

“Sorry,” he mutters, head still down. “I didn’t mean to shout at you.”

“Dirk?” you ask, unsure who you are questioning.

“Yeah,” he says. “Sorry again. When the world gets away from me sometimes the auto-responder shows up.” He lets out a weak snicker. “Pretty much same-old, same-old I guess.”

You cross your legs and put on your best psychologist expression - smooth, sophisticated, and ever-so-slightly smug. “So what I’m hearing is that you hate yourself and have always believed yourself to be a monster, and this is interfering with your ability to fully self-integrate. Let’s break that down, shall we?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again for your patience! Have a great day!


End file.
